


Red

by Someones_Alter_Ego



Category: Free!
Genre: Depression, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Minor Character Rei, Minor character Nagisa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 16:11:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5340299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Someones_Alter_Ego/pseuds/Someones_Alter_Ego
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru was happy with Rin. He smiled with Rin, he laughed with Rin (sometimes), he even talked with Rin. That's what you do with people you love, right? But didn't that mean Makoto loved him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> My first fanfiction published on this site. I really appreciate constructive criticism and suggestions on what to write. Please enjoy the story!

Haru was happy with Rin. He smiled with Rin, he laughed with Rin (sometimes), he even talked with Rin. That's what you do with people you love, right? But didn't that mean Makoto loved him? He could see Makoto give the barest flinch when he did his closed mouth smile at Rin, shrink back anytime he responded with words instead of grunts. Didn't Makoto want him to be happy?   
"Do you love me?" Makoto choked on his tea.   
"Uh- I- in a platonic way, yes." Makoto's voice raised the slightest octave when he lied.   
"You're lying. I can break up with Rin." Makoto set his breakfast down hurriedly.   
"Oh no! You don't have to do that; I'm telling the truth, really." Though his voice might have sounded normal to anyone else, it was as if he swallowed all the helium in a balloon to Haru. He decided to drop it.   
"Okay."   
* * *   
Makoto had stopped eating. The way he had done it was clever, clumping his food and spreading it around in a way that made it look eaten, even occasionally raising the bare chopsticks to his mouth and feigning chewing. But Haru was observant, and he saw.   
"Do you love me?" Makoto set down his chopsticks.  
"In a platonic way, yes." He was lying, again.   
"I can break up with Rin." Makoto stopped toying with his food and turned to face him.   
"I don't love you that way, Haru-chan." Haru dropped it, but didn't fail to notice Makoto throwing away his full bento box a few minutes after the conversation.   
* * *   
There was concealer and a bare razor on the side of Makoto's sink. The razor was clean, almost pristinely clean in comparison to the mess that normally consumed his bathroom. Makoto noticed him staring and snatched the blade up, simultaneously shoving the concealer into his cabinet.   
"I bought such a lousy razor. This thing falls out all the time." Haru tried very hard to not stare at Makoto's concealer toned forearms. (Just a fraction darker than the rest of his  
skin.)   
"Do you love me?" Makoto sighed heavily.   
"In a platonic way, yes." Makoto's voice was a balloon factory.   
"I can break up with Rin."   
"I'm beginning to think you don't love him as much as you say you do." Haru shrugged.   
"I love him, I just like you more." Makoto inhaled, but said nothing.   
* * *   
Makoto didn't show up at his house. Haru tried not to panic.   
"Hello?" Makoto answered. His voice was raw, and Haru could imagine him leaning over the toilet, trying to vomit up what he didn't eat last night.   
"You're not here." Silence. "Do you love me?"   
"Haru-chan, I'm sick. I'm not abandoning   
you."   
"Do you love me?" Haru persisted. Makoto coughed, then spat.   
"Of course Haru-chan. Just in the platonic way." Haru didn't respond, but he didn't hang up, because he knew Makoto would start up again if he did. "Haru?"   
"I can break up with Rin."   
"Goodbye, Haru."   
* * *   
Rin's face was streaked with tears.   
"What," his voice cracked, "What did I do? I can be better. I love you Haru-"   
"Makoto does too." Haru responded. Rin stilled.   
"You're breaking up with me because you love Makoto?" Haru shook his head, and kissed Rin ever so sweetly.   
"I love you, Rin. But I like Makoto more." Rin's face colored; he had never been very good at controlling his emotions.   
"What does that mean?!?! You either love him or you don't!" His voice was angry but watery, like he had failed to put out an oil fire and had created a larger mess.  
"I don't."  
"Then don't break up with me!" Rin bellowed. He fell to his knees, sobs wracking his body. Haru knelt beside him, and forced Rin's red eyes to stare into his blue ones.   
"I have to. I love you, I really do, but Makoto needs my help. This is me, helping him." Haru vaguely realized that his voice was also watery, and his eyes were small pools for his soul to climb out of. He blinked, once, twice, and knew Rin wouldn't understand. Haru left him where he was.   
* * *   
Makoto didn't improve. Makoto was still pale and skinny and it felt as if all Haru's work had been for nothing. He had left Rin crying outside the metal fence of Iwatobi High School to see some improvement in Makoto, yet none was found.   
"Do you love me?" Makoto smiled at him.   
"Yes, in the platonic way." Why did he keep lying? He knew Rin was gone. He could love Haru and Haru could act like he loved him back.   
"I broke up with Rin." He said tensely, uneasily; he didn't understand.   
"I know. That doesn't change my love for   
you. Let's go to class Haru." They walked to class in silence, and Haru wondered if Makoto could read him as well as he reads Makoto.   
* * *   
Makoto quit the swim club. It started with him coming less and less and then, one day, not at all. Haru felt like screaming; this wasn't, it couldn't, be his fault. He had broken up with red hair and red eyes, willing to have them replaced by brown and green. He had sacrificed sharp wit for gentle kindness, but nothing had changed. By accepting Rin Matsuoka, he had lost Makoto Tachibana. Maybe he wasn't direct enough? The following day he yanked Makoto's head down and forced his lips to his own in the school courtyard and tried to ignore the feeling of not Rin. He whispered into Makoto's ear,   
"I love you," and tried to push down the fakeness that overwhelmed him. Makoto cried softly in response.   
"I know you still love him." Was all he said. Makoto walked away.   
* * *   
He called Rin, at two in the morning on a Sunday, and asked him to talk him out of loving him. Rin remained silent on the other end of the line for so long that Haru checked they were still connected.   
"I'm brash." He said, finally. "I don't handle my emotions well. I quit swimming and hated the water for years. I left you for ten years, so you had no one but Makoto. You deserve Makoto. Makoto deserves you." In those two sentences, Rin had gotten to the heart of the issue. Haru collapsed onto his bed and sobbed, unashamed and loud. He wailed and begged Rin to hate him, begged Rin to become a horrible person because Makoto needed him and he needed Makoto, just not in the same way. Makoto wanted kisses and a hand to hold, but all Haru required was someone who interpreted the string of silence and heartbreak that was his life. He had lost his parents, his grandmother, and he was about to lose the only person that cared enough to whittle away the shell of disinterest that surrounded Haruka Nanase.   
"I love him." Haru wept. "So much. I just- I can't love him the way he needs me to." Haru's phone died.   
* * *   
Makoto didn't react when Rin showed up at Iwatobi. He didn't react when Rin took a deep breathe and began explaining every wrong he had ever committed, every wrong he thought of committing. Makoto said nothing when the red head- with tears streaming down his face- quietly admitted that he had hit Nitori in fits of rage, that he had played with the gray haired teen's heart because Haru was unattainable. Makoto only spoke up when he began to talk about Nagisa.   
"Rin, you shouldn't-"   
"I caught Nagisa with Momo." His voice quivered. "I caught Nagisa with Nitori." He inhaled deeply, eyes conveying deep sorrow. Rin didn't want to do this, Haru didn't want to watch Rin do this, hear Rin say these things. He didn't want to look at the betrayed look on Rei's face, Nagisa trying to tell him it wasn't true, that he loved Rei. But that was it, wasn't it? Love was a plague, a dangerous chance the small Iwatobi group had taken, and they had all been infected. They had all been killed. Rin finished his spiel quietly, and asked, "Do you love me?" Haru couldn't respond.   
* * *   
The next day, Haru was alone. Nagisa was absent, Rei was absent, Makoto was absent; the whole group of them had ceased to exist for that singular day at Iwatobi High School. Even Gou, who rarely ate lunch with them on the rooftop of the school, had called in sick. Haru unpacked his lunch , unproportioned and messy, because Makoto tended to pack his lunches. He ate slowly, waiting for the empty silence to be filled , to hear Nagisa's joyus laughter, Rei's gentle reprimands, Makoto's kind words. When none came, Haru realized he was alone. Completely, and utterly, alone. "I'm okay." He said to the open air around him. He forced a smile, laughed a loud laugh with his face tilted up to the sky, and let the tears stream down his face. "I'm okay."   
* * *   
When Makoto committed suicide, not even a full week later, Haru didn't cry. He had done all he could. He had broken hearts and destroyed relationships for Tachibana Makoto and he had died; it was inevitable. He did cry, however, when he pulled the trigger on Rin and watched the dark red of blood mingle with his vibrant hair, watched the life fade out of his eyes. The last words he had said to Rin were,  
"I'll see you again soon," before he turned the gun and pulled it on himself. He felt the flaring pain and wondered if he should have gone like Makoto, quietly watching the blood seep out of wide slits on his wrist, too high on painkillers to actually feel anything. He decided that this was a more fitting death for him, pain greater than or equal to the pain he had caused. As the world became darker, and he could see the dark liquid staining his fingertips, he brought Rin's cold hand to his lips, and kissed it.


End file.
